Good God.Gaston

Parachutists landed on pretty English fields. A farmer's wife, seeing .the greenish uniforms and German-type, coal-scuttle helmets, screamed to her husband: "Good God, Gaston, we're invaded."

A rifle muzzle pressed to a chutist's back showed the Home Guards were awake. "Don't move or I'll shoot," the trooper was warned. But because he was Captain John Berry of Arkansas and not a Jerry from Arnsberg, he was back in his quarters that night a live man.

Berry is one of the swashbuckling Hell's Angels that make up the most justifiably pampered outfit in the A.E.F. U.S. paratroopers get top pay--$50 extra for men, $100 for officers. They were the first taken off the monotonous English ration and given American victuals, including Southern fried chicken; they have the most cats & dogs (which they carry around in musette bags and take up in their planes), the smartest outfits (sleek high boots for town wear) and the latest and best equipment (including the 4-lb., 30-calibre automatic carbine, light field pieces, mortars, grenades, knives, bayonets, Garands and antitank guns).

Their leader, Lieut. Colonel Edson Raff, 34, fatalistically explains the extra fire power: "We want to keep from being eliminated any quicker than we have to."

Chafing to become advance agents of a second front, the troops keep on jumping, make exhaustive night marches over stone-wall-patched English fields, learn to use knives, to drive continental locomotives. When not included in the Dieppe raid the jumpers moped. One drank himself into the town jail.

Upon arrival in Britain the doughboy jumpers went to work at their 800-ft. jumps (U.S. Army minimum). Tommy counterparts were making jumps from even lower altitudes. Sensitive Colonel Raff cabled for permission to lower the jumps and shortly made a new record for the lowest (secret) mass jump without casualties.

Although Colonel Raff is a physical culturist and does not smoke, drink or play cards, his men have more than usual liberty. They gamble extra pay as they must soon gamble their lives. The galloping dominoes were so profitable for one Alabaman that he sent $4,000 home to the folks. After a round of poker, blackjack and craps the cash-lousy chutists took over an entire hotel for a clambake.

Camaraderie between officers and men is encouraged by Colonel Raff, whom they call "Little Caesar." He is tough enough himself not to lose authority by personal contact. Says Raff: "In a plane, I'm just another guy named Joe."

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